The Showings Of Julian Of Norwich

What You're Actually Dealing With Here

The Showings Of Julian Of Norwich is a 14th-century spiritual text that exists in two distinct versions. Most people approaching it for the first time don't realize they're picking up one of two fundamentally different documents. The Short Version came together roughly around 1395, probably just a few years after Julian experienced what she called her "shewings" or visions. The Long Version arrived about twenty years later, and it's substantially different from the first one. Julian wasn't writing a systematic theology. She was writing down what happened to her during a series of visions she had while lying ill, possibly near death, in May 1373. The Short Version reads more like an immediate record. The Long Version is where she spent decades reflecting on what those visions actually meant, and the additions she made aren't just padding. She rewrote large sections, added theological commentary, and reframed the whole thing with questions and answers that weren't in the original account. I ran into this problem when a client asked me to reference a specific passage about the "tasting of the Trinity" and assumed both versions said the same thing. They don't. The wording shifts enough between versions that quoting the Short Version when you mean the Long Version introduces subtle but real interpretive errors. My workaround was simple: always note which version you're citing, and if someone hands you a quote without a version label, assume it's the Long Version. That's the one people mean 90 percent of the time, and it contains the fuller theological content anyway.

The manuscript situation makes this messier than it needs to be. Two primary manuscripts survive. Cotton Nero A. XIV holds the Long Version. British Library Ms. Reco 13 holds the Short Version. A third manuscript, the "Gostling" fragment, appears to contain material from both traditions and may represent an intermediate stage. That's why editors keep revising their work and why the Cambridge and York texts differ slightly in passage ordering and content.

Reading It Without Getting Lost

Start with the Long Version. It's longer, sure, but it's the complete package. Julian frames it as a dialogue between her experience and her understanding of it. The famous line about "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well" only makes full sense in the context of the Long Version's theological framework. In the Short Version it reads almost casual. In the Long Version it's earned through nearly two hours of spiritual wrestling. One thing beginners consistently get wrong is treating the visions as linear narrative. They aren't. Julian herself says she doesn't understand the order or connection between them. The structure is associative, not chronological. You'll waste time trying to plot it on a timeline if you don't accept early on that the sequence doesn't follow logical narrative progression. The visions cluster around recurring symbols—the Lord and the Servant, the hazelnut, the seed, the mother, the sin that makes God blameworthy—which reappear and deepen across the text. Julian's theological moves here are more radical than most readers expect. She argues that God does not blame us for sin. She insists that damnation is impossible for those who ultimately turn to God. She claims that "sin is behovely"—that sin has a purpose in the divine plan—without saying sin is good. That last point trips people up constantly. Behovely means necessary or useful in the grand scheme, not morally justified. The distinction matters because Julian is walking a very tight line between orthodox Christianity and what her contemporaries would have considered dangerously close to universalism.

The Showings Of Julian Of Norwich In Practice

If you're studying this for academic work, use Roger Sharrock's Penguin Classics edition as your baseline. It's the standard English translation and includes both versions. For the original Middle English, the Arundel text edited by Anthony Bale gives you the Long Version with solid apparatus. The Short Version is trickier—Margot Fassler's work is thorough but less accessible to non-specialists. A practical warning about edition choices: some scholarly editions merge material from both versions or reorder passages. If you're doing citation work, check the table of contents against the manuscript tradition before you commit to an edition. I once spent an afternoon tracking down a passage that appeared in a widely used anthology but not in the manuscript itself. The editor had included a piece from the Gostling fragment that some scholars still debate as authentic Julian. It turned out the reference I needed wasn't there. Double-checking my edition saved me from building an argument on contested material. The most common misreading is treating Julian as a gentle mystic who just wanted everyone to feel good. She's gentle in tone, but her visions are intense and often unsettling. She sees hell, she sees God's wrath, she sees herself and others in damnation. The comfort comes after the confrontation, not instead of it. The Long Version makes this progression explicit through her questioning. She doesn't arrive at assurance by avoiding darkness. She arrives at it by working through it.

If you're looking for a place to download or access the text freely, the Church Censorship and Reform site and the Middle English Compendium both have reliable full texts. The Latin and English translations on the Internet Medieval Sourcebook are decent but not as complete as what you'd find in the standalone Julian editions. For the raw manuscript images, the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts page has both the Nero and Reco volumes available online. Julian wrote in East Anglian dialect, which means even the original text requires some effort for modern readers. Words like "shewing" (showing), "bodily sight" versus "ghostly sight," and her consistent use of "our Lord" to refer to God rather than Jesus alone will slow you down at first. Don't rush past these. They're not archaic decorations. They're technical terms in her theological vocabulary. "Bodily sight" means vision through the physical eyes. "Ghostly sight" means spiritual perception. Julian distinguishes them carefully throughout the text, and conflating them leads to misunderstandings about what she's claiming to have experienced. The text isn't long by medieval standards. The Long Version runs roughly 80,000 words. The Short Version is about a quarter of that. But the compression means every passage carries weight. Julian repeats herself deliberately, circling the same ideas from different angles the way someone might sit with a problem repeatedly until it resolves. That's the reading pace that works. Not fast. Not slow. Steady.

There's also a persistent myth that Julian was ordained or held any official church position. She wasn't. She was a laywoman, likely a anchoress, which means she lived a enclosed religious life but outside the formal clergy structure. This matters because it explains why her authority comes from experience rather than office. Medieval women writers who claimed direct revelation faced genuine danger. Julian navigated that by anchoring everything in Scripture and by framing her visions as gifts to be tested, not mandates to be followed. That's part of why the Long Version reads like a careful author protecting herself as much as revealing herself.

Where The Showings Of Julian Of Norwich Falls Short

The text doesn't offer a system. It offers an experience reported back decades later with reflection layered on top. If you need clean doctrinal structure, you won't find it here. Julian answers her own questions throughout, but those answers are personal resolutions, not universal propositions. Her claim that "God wills us to consent to our sin" has been read as softening divine judgment, but she immediately complicates it by saying God never consents to sin. The tension is intentional. She leaves it there. For practical purposes, if you're approaching this as a guide to medieval spirituality, expect it to resist easy categorization. It's part mystical theology, part autobiographical report, part theological meditation, and part vernacular Bible commentary. It doesn't fit neatly into any single genre. That's not a flaw in the text. It's a feature of the tradition Julian was working within. Anchoresses didn't produce systematized theology. They produced testimony. The most useful thing you can do with this text is read it slowly, note where Julian returns to the same image, and pay attention to how her understanding shifts between the Short and Long Versions. The gaps between what she saw and what she later understood are where the real work happens.